Sunday, April 25, 2010

Another cool video in the Yosemite Nature Notes series, highlighting an interesting wintertime phenomenon. As the rangers note in the video, not many people know about this interesting business of - and perhaps this video will encourage more people to go check it out, especially in cold wet springs like this one. While I laud (and share) the rangers' and this film's creator's desire to share more of these natural wonders with people - and they sure do want me to go check these things out - I am also conflicted about whether more tourists is what Yosemite needs! Winter is perhaps one time of year when this most heavily visited of parks gets a chance to catch a breath and recover a bit from the summer crush of touring humanity! Do we want to reduce that period of rest too? But, if we don't share these natural wonders with the people, will the people support protecting fragile places where frazil ice can still form such beautiful icy lava flows? Therein lie both the genius and the dilemma of National Parks, don't they?

1 comments:

I remember seeing this type of ice/snow in Connecticut along a river bank after a heavy snow winter. I was walking along and my foot sank into it where I thought it was solid. Very cold very quickly and it was scary. So, I can really appreciate how that﻿ could happen, and it would be awful to walk out to a deep part of the river and not know it.Amanda Vanderpool